Back To The Future

This advice from the Douglas Island News (Douglas Island, Alaska) from November 15, 1918 deals with preventing influenza, but substitute the word COVID and it could have been written last week.

Do’s and Don’ts For Influenza Prevention

• Wear a mask.

• Live a clean, healthy life.

• Keep the pores open–that is bathe frequently.

• Wash your hands before each meal.

• Live in an abundance of fresh air, day and night.

• Keep warm.

• Get plenty of sleep.

• Gargle frequently (and always after having been out) with a solution of salt in water (Half teaspoon of salt to one glass–eight ounces–of water).

• Report early symptoms to the doctor at once.

• Respect the quarantine regulations.

• Avoid crowds. You can get the influenza only by being near some one who is infected.

• Avoid persons who sneeze or cough.

• Do not neglect your mask.

• Do not disregard the advice of a specialist just because you do not understand.

• Do not disregard the rights of a community–obey cheerfully the rules issued by the authorities.

• Do not think you are entitled to special privileges.

• Do not go near other people if you have a cold or fever–you may expose them to the influenza and death. See the doctor.

• Do not think it is impossible for you to get or transmit influenza.

• Keep your hands out of your mouth.

• Do not cough or sneeze in the open.

• Do not use a public towel or drinking cup.

• Do not visit the sick or handle articles from the sick room.

• DON’T WORRY.

Newspapers.com

Five years ago today: One Day Of Beauty

Safeguarded

Now that I'm 'of a certain age' one of the things I do to take care of myself is schedule a yearly appointment at the dermatologist to have my skin checked. Today was my visit for 2020.

The office is in a professional building next to a hospital. I was there several weeks ago to see my primary care doctor, so I knew the building took patient safety seriously. The protocol started when the office called to verify my appointment. The assistant asked if I (or anyone in my house) had any of a long list of physical symptoms, if anyone in the house had traveled within the past 21 days, if I had any reason to believe I had been exposed to COVID-19, or if I had been in close proximity to anyone who had tested positive. I answered NO to all the questions, and she told me I was required to wear a mask covering both my mouth and nose the entire time I was in the building. I agreed.

When I entered the building lobby the first thing I saw was an associate standing at a card table. He scanned my forehead with a thermometer, asked me the screening questions again, then handed me a sticker to wear while I was in the building.

The dermatology practice has five physicians, and normally the waiting room is packed. Today half the chairs were blocked off with tape, and there were also extra chairs placed six feet apart out in the hall. There were only two other patients waiting, and I was called back to a room within ten minutes.

The doctor entered wearing a mask, and did not offer his usual handshake. He thoroughly checked my body for skin issues (which included briefly removing my mask so he could see my face). He burned off three precancerous spots with liquid nitrogen, then told me to come back in one year and left. At the payment desk they had a sign next to a container of pens indicating they had been cleaned.

The Assistant

I'm sure you remember that for the past month I have been working for the U.S Census, doing Group Quarters operation.The operation should have started in April (and been finished by June), but when COVID shut everything down the dates changed to the beginning of July through the beginning of September.

This week the team I'm assigned to has been one of several working on the on and off-campus housing for one of the city's major universities. Many of the units are currently unoccupied, but we still have to make multiple tries to talk to everyone in the building and find out if they were living there on April 1, 2020. The Census Bureau takes its mission of counting everyone in the country seriously!

Yesterday night my boss (Census Field Supervisor, or CFS in Census-speak) told me she had a problem. The Bureau has a firm no-overtime policy. With three days left in the week she was getting very close to the maximum 40 hour limit and needed me to help her out today. At the end of July, when I went to the Census office to complete my onboarding process I learned that I had been assigned as a CFS Assistant. The title carried no increase in pay, but allowed me to help out with paperwork and answer questions from other enumerators. Up to now the title hadn't meant anything, but that was about to change

This morning, after our daily team phone call, I met the CFS at a parking lot a couple of miles from my house. She gave me boxes that contained the work that had been assigned, and told me which sets belonged to which Enumerator. Then she headed back home to do paperwork, while I headed towards our team meeting place, another parking lot behind a restaurant 20 minutes away. I distributed the paperwork and set up an afternoon meeting to collect anything that had been completed.

Once everyone was gone I figured I'd have a lot of free time. That turned out not to be the case. I received a fairly steady stream of texts and phone calls from both the CFS and the people in the field. In between I organized the Census paperwork I have been carrying around in the trunk of my car, setting aside the surplus to go back to the main Census office. As each Enumerator came back to turn their things in I made sure everything was filled in correctly.

At the end of the day the CFS came to pick up the turned in files so she could return them to the office. She thanked me for my help, and said she might be calling on me again.

Civic Duty Completed

Today was our state's primary election day. With my mail in ballot they included a sticker I could use to show I had done my duty. I wore it with pride.

Five years ago today: Accidental Onions

It's A Ruby Kind Of Day

As in a wedding anniversary. Forty years ago Hubby Tony and I said I Do and started our life together.

Right after last year's anniversary we started discussing how we would celebrate such a big event. We threw out different destinations for a trip, and made some tentative decisions. This year, about the time we would have contacted the travel agent, the world went into its COVID free fall and we were glad that we hadn't put a deposits down on anything.

I'm hopeful that eventually we'll be able to travel, but in the meantime our special weekend was quite low key. Friday we journeyed to Meramec Caverns. Yesterday we took in an exhibit about the impact of local women and the suffragist movement at the Missouri History Museum. Later in the day, during Mass the priest called us to the front and gave us an anniversary blessing. We went out for good Italian food and then a dessert of frozen custard before heading home.

This morning we hiked on a trail at a park near our house. Tony cooked dinner, and afterwards we had a family Zoom call, with the entire family together on one screen. It was good to see everyone and catch up.

What would a big event be without presents? For a long time I was at a loss as to what to get Tony, but an online search led to some great ideas, and I put this memento together:

Each line is a different font. An inspiration piece I found online had some bird on a wire silhouettes at the bottom, but I substituted the tiny cat clip art, which I thought more reflected us. (Don't you love how their tails turn into a heart?) I added our names, printed it out, and placed it in a frame.

Five years ago today: A Sunday Story

Meramec Caverns

Hubby Tony took a vacation day today so we could play. Early in the week we discussed possible day trips we could take, and decided on Meramec Caverns. It is only an hour away from the house, and despite driving past the exit on the highway too many times to count, neither of us had ever been there.

Meramec Caverns is the largest cave west of the Mississippi. French explorers were the first white men to experience the area. For more than 100 years it was a saltpeter mine, and the cavern was fought over during the Civil War.

After the war people started holding dances inside the cave. In the 1930s Lester Dill bought it to develop into a show cave. He was able to find unknown sections, including a room where artifacts from Jesse James and his gang were found. In the 1950s Dill had advertisements for the Caverns painted on barns in 14 states and it became "America's Cave".

Stalagtites and stalagmites in one of the rooms

Our tour lasted 90 minutes. The tour group included an extended family group with a lot of  children, and I was a little concerned they wouldn't remember to social distance, but both they and all the adults in the group did a good job. The cave's well-lit walkways were easy to navigate, but a bit slippery from all the humidity in the air.

When we got out of the car the temperature outside was 80 degrees, but as soon as we entered the cave area the temperature dropped, and I was glad to put on the jacket I brought with me. In the bathroom I saw a cute graphic over a mirror and stopped to take a selfie:

After the tour was over Tony and I drove to a cafe, where my sampler platter of egg salad, tuna salad, and chicken salad with vegetables, fruit, and crudites tasted as good as it looked.

When we came out of the restaurant large drops of rain were starting to come down. The rain got stronger and followed us all the way home, forcing us to scrap our plan to stop for more sightseeing and shopping.

Five years ago today: Distracticat

Thought You Could Hide?

When I bought my laptop computer several years ago Windows 10 came pre-installed. I was familiar with the operating system from using it on my desktop system, but there were a couple of strange differences between the two I had trouble figuring out.

An example-for the past five years, one of my volunteer activities has been making slides to highlight things that are going on around my church. They run on electronic bulletin boards (large TV monitors) in the vestibule and multi-purpose building. I've gotten pretty good at putting slides together using the desktop and the Paint program.

When I looked for the program on the laptop I couldn't find it anywhere. Instead, there was something called Paint 3D. Its claim to fame was that you could create projects with 3D capabilities. I played around with the program a little bit, and it was very interesting, but in my mind it was a poor substitute for the program I knew backwards and forwards.

One night I was sitting in the family room with my laptop and needed a clip art for a blog post. I got fed up with what Paint 3D wouldn't do, and started searching the internet looking for a solution. When I found that the classic Paint was still there (and just hidden) I was so excited!

Now when I need to insert an image in a post from my laptop, I just need to type Paint in the search box on the taskbar, and then select it from the list of results.

Five years ago today: A "Snow Day" In July

Recent Randomness From My Phone

For the past few weeks, the mid-afternoon sun coming through the skylight in our condo has produced an arrow pointing the way to the stairwell.

I saw this artistic pile of rocks on the sewer cover close to a mysterious driveway that Google says leads to an interdenominational church and retreat center. I wonder why it wouldn't have signage?

I've heard of quite a few nut and seed butters, but this was a new one for me. It was quite expensive, or I would have brought it home to try.

For years I've seen the steeple of this building as I whizzed by in the car at 40 miles per hour. One day I rode by on my bike, and I was able to stop and figure out that it's an Orthodox church.

Five years ago today: Cooking In The Car

Balloting And Bridges

Back in April I received requests for absentee ballots for the April, August, and November elections from the county. I mailed them all in, and actually voted that way in April.

Then the state put an end to that. Missouri law only has six allowable reasons for absentee voting. The one I took advantage of last time, "Incapacity or confinement due to illness or physical disability, including caring for a person who is incapacitated or confined due to illness or disability" was loosely interpreted by the county to include people 60 years or older. The law actually says 65, so I was out of luck.

However, last month the governor signed a bill into law to establish a temporary vote-by-mail system for the next two elections. I received my ballot in the mail a couple of weeks ago, with instructions that it had to be notarized unless I was in one of the at-risk categories. Fortunately the Missouri Secretary of State's website had a list of people who were volunteering to notarize ballots. This morning Hubby Tony pulled up the list and found a location that was open today. He is still working on resetting his car's computer, so the library branch he chose would allow him to do some driving. It was a half hour away, close to the university Tony attended.

At the library there was no line for the notary, and we were in and out in fifteen minutes. Instead of driving straight home Tony meandered around the area, reminiscing about different places. All of a sudden we were at Interstate 270, and needed to decide if we were going to head home or in the opposite direction.  Tony asked if I was interested in checking out the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which once carried Route 66 over the Mississippi River from Illinois. I was. It was time for an adventure.

Thanks to Google Maps we easily found the parking area for the bridge. We walked across the bridge over to the Missouri side (approximately a mile). At the end of the bridge there was a trailhead for a riverfront trail that went all the way downtown, but we just turned around and came back.

Observation bump out on the bridge

Instead of backtracking to go home, Tony took an Illinois state highway south until we saw the first downtown bridge over the Mississippi. We crossed back over into Missouri, and meandered our way to the condo. We made a slight detour to drop our ballots at the post office, so we could call the project completely finished.

Five years ago today: And Off Goes The Polish!

50 Life Lessons

A friend sent me an email titled 50 Life Lessons. I appreciated their wisdom and wanted to share the inspiring thoughts to live by with you.

There was no author cited on the email, but I always want to give credit where it's due. Usually my search doesn't lead anywhere, but this time I had success. I learned that the list was written by Regina Brettin and published in The Plain Dealer in 2006. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.

18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

36. Growing old beats the alternative – dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.

38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.

41. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

42. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

45. The best is yet to come.

46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

48. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

49. Yield.

50. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

Five years ago today: It's Always Good To Take A Chance